Are You Sharing Songs With Someone New?

Did you know your playlist holds over 800 songs? Music always was our easiest form of communication. When things were too big or too real to talk about, we talked in songs instead.

Sometimes you broke my heart with songs. Some of the songs made me smile. Sometimes you shared songs just because you knew there was something in them I’d like. Those were always the best ones because I knew you sent them just because you were thinking about me. Your understanding of me in that sense was perfect.

When you stopped sending songs, I knew it was over. We were over. I mourned the loss of my personal playlist curator as much as I mourned the loss of the broken boy I chose to love.

Now when I hear a song I think you’d like, I can’t pick up my phone and ask you if it’s one you know. Instead, I pick up my phone and skip to the next song.

I can’t stand being reminded of you. Not yet.

I anticipate the day when the heartache dulls and I can listen to those songs with fondness, remembering how much I enjoyed our time together. For every experience we shared, there’s a song that reminds me of the moment.

Now I’m left wondering if you’re sending songs to someone new. Does she appreciate them the way I did? Does she make an effort to understand you through the lyrics you pick out as favorites? Does she know it’s fleeting, so she shouldn’t count on it? Shouldn’t count on you?

Then I remember that you’re no longer mine to wonder about, worry about, care about, feel hopeful about. Maybe you never were.

I can’t ask you for a happy song to make a bad day better. I can’t ask you for a song to ease the hurt you caused. I can’t ask you for a song that makes me forget the past and live for now. I can’t tell you how some of the music you gave me healed parts of me that I didn’t even know were broken. I can’t reach out when I hear a new lyric in an old song and it opens up a whole different world of meaning.

All I can do is skip the songs for now and hope that whoever you’re sharing music with these days can make you happy in a way I never could.